READ ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY?

[Stanley]

Finished Hook, Line and Sinker. If you've never read them have a look, you won't be disappointed. So.... today I shall be in the shed! I've scratched my le Carre and Deighton itch and my leg is improving. There is a God!

[Stanley]

I realised two things yesterday. First was that I hadn't re-read Deighton's 'SS-GB', his book based on the assumption that we folded in 1940 and Germany took over the country. Bleak reading but a good story. I also realised that I stopped buying his books in about 1990 and there is another Bernard Samson Trilogy I haven't read. 'Faith, Hope and Charity'. Quick furtle on Bookfinder and I found all three at about £3 each inc P&P so I ordered them. (Memo to self: Must stop buying books!)

[Stanley]

Re-reading 'The IPCRESS File' while I wait for Faith, Hope and Charity. Then I shall have Omissi's book on Air Power to have a go at. It won't take long to get here, they only had one route from the US, Priority Fed-Ex. Postage was £27! (Another memo to self: MUST STOP DOING THIS!)

[Stanley]

Omissi book has been charged and posted. Tension mounts!

[Stanley]

Finished my Deighton marathon! Reading Gervase Phinn's account of being a school inspector in Yorkshire.

[Stanley]

I started reading 'Old Pybus' by Warwick Deeping to while away the time till my Omissi book arrived. It's one of the books I'd promised myself I would read when I was retired. Old fashioned writing (1928) but a lovely book giving a good description of rural England and a life soon to be shattered by WW2.
My book arrived in the afternoon. Brand new copy with slight internal water stain and $1000 cheaper than the next ex-library example. Someone has slipped up! I am a happy bunny. I shall finish Old Pybus and then dive into the Middle East!

[Stanley]

Fascinating read. Opens up all sorts of areas I didn't know about involving the use of the RAF for colonial policing. Some interesting side lights as well including the opportunity for the development of tank warfare in Mesopotamia which the War Office missed with repercussions to tank design at the beginning of WW2. Riveting stuff!

[Stanley]

Finished Omissi on Air Power. Definitely not disappointed, it is just as good as I was advised. Gives an entirely fresh picture of the role of the RAF in colonial policing during the inter war years and flags up many of the precursors to our current problems in the former colonies. Good insights into Afghanistan and the troubles on the NW frontier. Particularly shocking when viewed through a modern frame of reference is the prevailing attitude towards the indigenous people, they were seen by many as sub-human and the use of bombing, machine gunning and even chemical warfare was seen as quite normal. Trenchard even advocated bombing working class areas during the General Strike. Worth ordering on inter-library loan.
Tiz, I have chased up many of David's references and one in particular might interest you. Look for 'The First Battle of Britain' by R H Fredette (1966) The story of the German air offensive and the birth of the RAF. I ordered a copy off Bookfinder yesterday, hardback for £16. I suspect it could be an interesting read.

[Stanley]

Fredette is in the post. Must stop buying books....

[Whyperion]

Theres quite a good independent s/h bookshop up in Settle if you are interested , as I dont think theres a direct bus from Barnoldswick its worth going into Skipton first for a look around Oxfam book shop.

[Stanley]

Fredette book arrived and I am into it. A real find as I had always been under the impression that the air raids in WW1 were amateurish affairs that caused little damage. Not so! The Germans coined the phrase 'strategic bombing', used the Goertz bomb sight and dropped bombs up to 1000lb in weight. I knew nothing about the 'Giant' bombers and am surprised at the size of these early planes. See this LINK. They were flying at up to 20,000 feet using oxygen. Only just into the book but it is already a revelation. Definitely worth reading.
(Tiz, if you haven't seen this book you need to get hold of it!)

[Whyperion]

Its the crew of seven - inc one engineer per engine that surprises me. Wasnt it the likes of the NE coast of Britain that got bombed - or was that only from airships and warships?

[Stanley]

You'll have to read the book Whippy, the title gives it away. 'The First Battle of Britain'. I got more surprises yesterday, the Giants had a pneumatic tube system for passing messages between the crew and used triangulation of wireless signals to establish position. One surprising fact, including WW2 UK has never been attacked by bigger planes than the later Giants. Their wingspan was only exceeded by the Boeing Superfortresses. They dropped bombs that weighed more than 1000kg but not many of them.

[Stanley]

Finished Fredette. Well worth looking for a copy, it was certainly a revelation to me and the combination of reading Omissi and Fredette has given me a much better handle on air power from 1910 onwards.
Talking about NSA earlier triggered me and I have started on 'Body of Secrets', an anatomy of the NSA by James Bamford. Just getting into it but already fascinated by the early history of GCHQ and code-breaking. I'd never heard of TICOM (LINK) but not surprising as it is still under embargo. Files may be opened some time this year. Some really frightening cock-ups revealed already and I'm only just starting the book.

[Whyperion]

They only people that dont know our secrets are us , the rest of the world ( well Russia , USA, China ) probably know everything one way or another.
The middle east dont really care about them , ( when the arabic world own most of the UK banking network and providers I wonder whom should be worried about any supposed terrorist threat )

[Stanley]

Body of Secrets is fascinating. Yesterday I learned the story behind Gary Powers and the U2 incident. Closely followed by the thinking behind the Bay of Pigs. Shocking evidence that the US Army were proposing terrorist incidents engineered by the army in America to whip up public opinion against communism in general and Cuba in particular. Frightening stuff and all from the official records.

[Whyperion]

USA paranoid about communism anyway , hardly needed whipping up into a frenzy.

[Stanley]

That covers everyone in America?
B of S gets better. Remember the Chagos Islanders and the eviction? The UK allowed the US to base an NSA intelligence gathering station there. That's the real reason, not simply an airfield.
Remember me telling the story of Big Harry and the identification of the cause of the Kursk disaster? He told me the data came from an LA class US sub gathering intelligence and said there was always one on station. B of S confirms this, it was the USS Memphis.
Full story of the attack on the USS Pueblo by North Korea. (LINK) Fascinating study of what happens when an intelligence operation goes wrong because desk-bound senior officers don't understand the problems. All documented with references from serving senior officers at the time. Tragedy was that the Pueblo had found a 'window' many miles away where they could gather the same intelligence but they were ignored and sent into danger. Consensus of opinion is that she arrived off the coast just as the North Korean army were massacring prisoners and the attack was an attempt to cover this up.
For 17 years two NSA officers were passing cypher keys to the Russians. The result made the cracking of Enigma look like small change but funnily enough this never surfaced!
Cracking book giving a real insight into what was going on and all from reliable sources.

[Sue]

I have just read ( on my kindle) The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz. This is a fascinating and true story about an escape from a Russina POW camp in Siberia.

I have also just ploughd through Shakespeares Wife by Germaine Greer. I was motivated t read this after Time team did the programme on New Place Stratford. Whilst I thought this was agood review of the social history of Stratford and Elizabethan women, I did not feel it really told me anything about Ann Hathaway herself.I enjoyed the read but found the endless quotations hard work. I think the book was more like a PhD thesis. I am just embarking on the Lost Books of the New Testament by Joseph Lumpkin

I have also recently enjoyed The War horse and First Fleet. The latter by M Howard Morgan gave me a feel for the life of my Australian convict ancestors.

[Stanley]

I know the feeling Sue. Some very dodgy ancestors in the Aussie side of my family!
Body of Secrets continues to amaze and intrigue. When the US scuttled from Saigon, they had ample warning from intelligence intercepts that the final offensive was imminent but General Westmorland wouldn't accept that the US were defeated. One consequence was that nobody destroyed the large stock of brand new secret cypher equipment stored in a hangar at Saigon and it all fell into Chinese and Russian hands eventually.
At one point intelligence was being gathered on American Quakers because they were thought to be aiding the enemy by sending care parcels. At that time a Quaker was President, Richard Nixon.
Another little known fact. On January 24th 2000 the whole of the NSA computer system crashed due to being out of date and overloaded. For months the US had to rely on the systems at GCHQ which were not affected. A year later the system was running again but at less than 20% capacity and it was a long time before they got up to speed again. I'll bet GCHQ crowed a bit over that one! Funny we were never told.....

[Nolic]

I picked up a free Kindle book on Amazon called "Rippers Row". I must remember to read synopsis and reviews before clicking to download as this is the biggest load of guff I've never had to pay for.
I'm fascinated by the Whitechaple Murders hence jumping at the book but this is the version where "Jack" is a vampire hunter and is ridding London of vampire maids in order to reach their master. It really is so bad that I must finish reading it to see if it can get any worse - fortunately its a short book or this would present real dilemmas in terms of wasting time.

On a more profitable level I've just downloaded Ofsted's revised inspection schedule for children's homes and I'll be reading them today to prepare to undertake some evaluations of homes to give the owners an idea of where to go to reach the required standards. Nolic

[Stanley]

Finished Body of Secrets. A scary and convincing read. I was struck by the fact that even though published in 2002 he is vastly impressed by 1tb hard drives as state of the art, they are standard kit now and it makes you wonder how the capabilities of the intelligence community has expanded since then. The other main conclusion you come away with after reading the book is that the dangers are not the technology but how it is misused. Plenty of examples of military commanders not understanding or ignoring intelligence reports and senior politicians authorising illegal uses. Very scary stuff. The biggest surprise was that at the time of 9/11 the NSA systems were crippled and they were relying on the still-functioning GCHQ system for almost a year to augment their processing capabilities. Funny but I don't remember anyone ever mentioning this! Perhaps this is one aspect of 'the special relationship'.
Well worth reading, full of surprises and explanations of things that were puzzling at the time. I suppose the bottom line is that this is still happening as I write.

[Stanley]

Decided to read Bob Baer's 'See No Evil' again while B of S was fresh in my mind. Bob Baer was a case officer (the men who ran the agents on the ground) and resigned in 1977 because he was disgusted with what he saw as the disastrous decline in the way the CIA was run.
You always get something new when you re-read a book like this and what struck me while I was reading his account of training and selection processes was that what he was describing was the structure of a strange course I attended at Manchester Business School in 1979. It was run by a Canadian college principle called 'Squee' Gordon The course was supposed to be to promote management skills in higher administration of further education. We were divided into sections of the mythical country called Chelt and our job was to attract as much support for education in our region as possible. I became the black arts manager and put out completely spurious stories about the Chelt sheep in other regions being diseased and rumours about leading opponents having relations with the sheep. At the time we all saw it as a big joke and a few days holiday at someone else's expense but now I wonder what was really going on. No, I was not approached or offered a job!

[Stanley]

Finished re-reading See No Evil yesterday. It was a good idea to read it back to back with Body of secrets as they reinforce each other, BOS from the NSA point of view and SNE from the CIA. The overall picture from the two is clear. In the decade prior to 9/11 both organisations lost sight of the ball due to political interference, desk officers not familiar with how human agents were used and manipulation of intelligence input to suit political needs. Baer flags up missed opportunities which, while they wouldn't have guaranteed prevention of terrorist plots could have had positive results. Important to recognise that both books have been vetted by the parent organisations and approved for publication. In itself, this shows that the climate in both organisations had changed and transparency was seen to be one defence against future problems. Well worth reading if you want a deeper understanding of what was going on. By the way, it's quite clear that the interference was still active when the search for 'weapons of mass destruction' was being pursued to justify the attack on Saddam Hussein. Fascinating stuff!

[Bruff]

Have just finished 'May the Lord in His Mercy Be Kind to Belfast', by Tony Parker, published in 1995. Tony Parker was (he died 1997) an oral historian who simply interviewed people and then creates his books from their own words. Which sounds like cheating. But he is capable of letting the words speak for the people themselves and not be coloured by his own opinions, leaving it to you to make up your own mind. That takes real skill. Here, he talks to teachers, bus drivers, doctors, politicians, soldiers etc etc and, quite remarkably and controversially at the time, extremists on both sides wholly and implacably committed to violence. It is a fantastic and quite eye-opening book. The opening chapter (a break from his usual interview technique) in which he posists 10 humdrum scenarios of everyday life (for example, taking your clothes to the dry-cleaners) and then proceeds to show how the choices you make defines the religion you hold, is quite devastating.

I have had this book for over 10 years and at the same time bought another Tony Parker book, 'Soldier, Soldier', in which the same oral history technique is applied to the soldiers in a British regiment. I shall hopefully read this soon....

Richard Broughton